Imaging systems are arranged to output an image. They may comprise printing or display systems, wherein an output is either a printed or displayed image. In these cases, color data for the image may be represented in a first color space and it may be necessary to map this color data to a second color space that is used to produce the output. To do this a color mapping may be used. In a halftone imaging system, the color mapping may be followed by a halftoning process so as to reproduce a continuous tone image represented in the second color space using a series of dot shapes. This may allow the continuous tone image to be printed on a printing device with a discrete number of output drop levels. The result of this process is an output in the form of a halftone color separation. The output of any particular imaging system is dependent on the characteristics of the particular color halftone processing pipeline that is used by the imaging system.